1. Technical Field
This invention relates to programmable machine systems, and more particularly, to methods and apparatus for defining the formats of business transactions for the purposes of entering, outputting, printing and translating data which normally will be transmitted and received among trading partners.
2. Discussion
Traditionally, business transactions among trading partners have been documented primarily on paper thereby resulting the self-evident problems associated with the storage and transmittal of a large number of physical documents. In an attempt to overcome these problems, the trend has been to use electronic data interchange (EDI) to transmit and receive various business transactions among trading partners. Examples of such transactions include Releases, Advance Ship Notices, Purchase Orders, Purchase Order Acknowledgements, Requests for Quotes, Quotes, Invoices and Bank Remittances. Thus, instead of documenting these transactions on paper, the data are transmitted electronically (typically via a modem or digital data line connection) between computer systems operated by each trading partner. There may or may not be involved a third party service to receive, store, and forward these electronic business transactions.
In order to permit the translation and use of documents exchanged between the computer systems, there must be established some type of standards for the definition of transactions. Such standards that have been implemented include ANSI ASC X12 (set up by the American National Standards Institute), EDIACT (Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce and Transport) and TDCC (Transportation Data Coordinating Committee) formats. These formats utilize element, segment and transaction dictionaries. These dictionaries are extremely flexible in that they have only a few mandatory requirements and a wide variety of options. Thus, a particular trading partner can specifically tailor a business transaction such as an Invoice to its own needs while still being within the standard format.
For purposes of this invention, the term "dictionary-defined" transaction format is a format which has been agreed upon by a standard's organization which may be comprised of a group of trading partners, agencies, countries, departments within an organization, etc. that use a three-tiered dictionary concept. The 3 tiers are as follows:
(1) Tier 1 is the definition and identification of individual, unit data items known as elements. Examples of elements are date, date qualifiers, quantity, items number etc. An element consists of a datum having an assigned fixed data length or variable data length. PA1 (2) Tier 2 is the definition of records known as segments which are uniquely identified and consist of particular groupings of elements in a particular organization for the ultimate purpose of defining a part of a transaction. Preferably, but not necessarily, the grouping of elements in a particular segment should have some logical relationship. Some elements may be required and others may be optional within a particular segment. PA1 (3) Tier 3 is the complete and full definition of transactions which are uniquely identified. Transactions are defined in terms of their segments in a particular order. Some segments may be required and others may be optional in a particular transaction definition. Also, groups and subgroups of segments within a transaction may be further defined to indicate multiple repetitions or iterations of the group and/or subgroup (loops).
The flexibility provided by dictionary-defined transactions unfortunately also causes some real-world problems. In practice, larger trading partners are individually tailoring the information required in each of their transactions so that, while they do meet the dictionary-defined format, the completed transaction formats chosen by each are quite different. Thus, if one trading partner wants to do business via EDI with a variety of other trading partners, at least one of the trading partners must be capable of configuring and utilizing its computer system so that it can meet all of the requirements dictated by the other trading partners. For purposes of this invention, the term "dictionary-structured" transaction format is one that meets or approximates the guidelines of a dictionary-defined format but is individually tailored by a given trading partner. Thus, a "dictionary-structured" transaction format may be the same as, may be different from, may deviate from, may be a subset of, or may be a superset of that format specified by the "dictionary-defined" format guidelines.
There are several software programs for use with electronic data exchange currently on the market. They include:
EDI*PC.TM. (General Electric Corporation; Rockville, Md.) PA0 TELINK.TM. (EDI, Inc.; Hanover, Md.) PA0 METRO * Translator.TM. (Metro.Mark Integrated System, Inc.; Roslyn, NY) PA0 They attempt to produce trading partner specific transactions through a combination of operator selective input with a generalized format covering multiple trading partners. PA0 They cannot produce exacting dictionary-structured transaction formats and "other part" formatting to the specific trading partner requirements as is done by the present invention.
However, prior to the present invention, they are believed to have had the following drawbacks: